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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Wilson offer as evidence of cross-cultural epi-genetic rules?

2. What does Edmund Wilson say the arts ultimately create?

3. Where does postmodernism fail to accord with science, in Edmund Wilson's account?

4. How do widely distributed cultural traits affect genes?

5. What is the traditional view of art?

Short Essay Questions

1. What ethical perspective does Wilson call the empiricist view?

2. What is the fundamental assumption behind consilience?

3. What does Wilson say the liberal arts should address?

4. What ethical perspective does Wilson call the Transcendental view?

5. What is the sign, in EO Wilson's account, that culture is evolving?

6. What is the purpose of the social sciences, and how does Wilson distinguish the social sciences from the physical social sciences?

7. What social science does Wilson credit with coming closest to consilience?

8. What threats to contemporary culture does Wilson describe, and how is consilience useful in answering them?

9. What are the two branches of anthropology Wilson describes, and what question does he say they both fail to answer?

10. How does Wilson describe the universality of art?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Are 'epi-genetic rules' really just another way of saying complex social factors that have to be experienced individually? Does Wilson really evade the complexity and individuality of experience and sensation and language use?

Essay Topic 2

Is consilience possible, and if so, who would practice it? Is it necessarily communal? In our modern circumstance of specialized research and analysis, can one person--can one panel of people contain and unify all knowledge? Is Wilson arguing for the unification of knowledge, or just better networks and communication between disciplines?

Essay Topic 3

European and American birth rates are relatively low compared to many developing countries. How do you reconcile this with Wilson's arguments about evolution, and how the expansion of power over territory allows the dissemination of genes? Has America's influence been genetic? How would you characterize its influence, and reconcile its influence with its low birth rates?

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